By Kayli McGlynn
Staff Writer

After weeks of searching to no avail, the Malaysian plane that had mysteriously disappeared mid-flight on March 8 is still captivating the world . Officials say they have everything under control and they are doing their best to find the missing plane, but perhaps they could have done a better job from the beginning.

Flight 370, flying from Kuala Lumpar, Malaysia to Beijing, China, was carrying 239 people. The plane lost contact and disappeared off of the radar after the plane’s transponder was turned off.

It has recently come to light that the only solid piece of information that was being released was actually false. For weeks everyone was being told that the last words from the cockpit were, “All right, good night,” but it has now been revealed that the actual words were “Good night Malaysian three seven zero.” This small mistake was telling of the disorganization among media and the government.

From the beginning of the investigation, the Malaysian government ran a disorganized search. They did not know how to go about announcing information or withdrawing it, nor did they have a clear plan of what to do in a situation like this.

The families of the passengers are unhappy with the government search; they lack confidence in what information officials are releasing– which is reasonable. So far, nothing the officials have offered has been confirmed, leaving people with false hope and confusion.

The search zones for the plane seem to change every day, making it clear that officials have no idea where to look for the missing plane. With such a wide variety of possible crashing sights, it makes it improbable that search teams will find the flight any time soon, even with the extra help from boats and planes from Australia, the United States, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea and China. “They keep getting people’s hopes up with their theories, even though they don’t know if they are true,” senior Nick Gainer said.

The media, too, has acted inappropriately, propagating fringe theories to increase their views. Families cannot get proper information fromthe government, and are further misled with baseless information from the media.

Sophomore Julia Schauder thought otherwise: “At least all of the media attention is keeping people interested in the story, giving the government more of an incentive to find the plane,” Schauder said.

April 7 was a promising day for the investigation, since the Australian navy ship, the Ocean Shield, and the U.S. pinger locator received signals that seemed to match the plane’s. The pinger locator is used to pick up signals from a plane’s black box, which emits frequencies to help find lost planes, even if they crash. According to CNN, officials warn that this signal may not be the one from the plane, and that they have not found the aircraft yet, even if this is an encouraging sign.

Along with the plane’s signal being located, officials have discovered that the plane purposely flew around the radar’s detection. As of now, no one can confirm why the plane would do something like that, adding another mystery to the case.

The Malaysian officials have come only a little closer to finding the plane and maybe if they had control of the situation as soon as the flight went off the radar, the plane would be safe and families would not be grieving. This investigation should have been handled more professionally than the officials have been handling it, since 239 lives are presumably lost.